Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. The mid-depth ocean circulation is critically linked to actual changes in the long-term global climate system. However, in the past few decades, predictions based on ocean circulation models highlight the lack of data, knowledge, and long-term implications in climate change assessment.
Here, using , observations produced by Argo floats from , and Lagrangian simulations, we show that only 3. Knowledge of ocean circulation is generally more complete in the low-latitude oceans but is especially poor in high latitude regions. Accordingly, we propose improvements in forecasting, model representation of stochasticity, and enhancement of observations of ocean currents.
The study demonstrates that knowledge and model representations of global circulation are substantially compromised by inaccuracies of significant magnitude and direction, with important implications for modelled predictions of currents, temperature, carbon dioxide sequestration, and sea-level rise trends.
Analysis of big Argo data reveals that model representation of global ocean circulation near m depth is substantially compromised by inaccuracies. Only 3. However, knowledge of mid-depth ocean circulation is hampered by the lack of direct observations and novel methods are therefore needed to improve data, modeling accuracy in order to resolve the mechanism of mid-depth ocean circulation and related processes. In the past two decades, over floats from the Argo program provided more than two million profiles of water column properties from the upper m depth of the global ocean 10 , 19 , These enable the construction of satellite-tracked sea-surface profiles and cycles for direct estimation of mid-depth ocean velocities, and spatio-temporal circulation patterns from regional to global scales 20 β Argo velocities derived in this manner are Lagrangian, whereas ocean circulation models are Eulerian, resulting in systematic biases of current velocity when the coordinates are transformed 34 β The assessment is based on , Argo float observation displacements over 20 years, together with float simulation experiments.
The goal is to map the areas of the oceans that are more reliably modelled and classify them in terms of how much is known about spatial variations in mid-ocean circulation.
